Decorating Ideas for Chinese New Year Parties

When decorating for a Chinese New Year Party, your color scheme should be bold reds with gold being the preferred accent color. However, since certain flowers are considered good luck on Chinese New Year regardless of their color, you should not worry whether the flowers match the red and gold color palette.

Perhaps the most universally recognized party decoration for Chinese New Year is the paper lantern. The 15^th and last day of the celebration, in fact, is known as the Lantern Festival. You can purchase these fairly inexpensively, or make your own. These can either be hung individually or strung together into a garland with ribbon or yarn. The lanterns can be decorated with Chinese calligraphy, pictures of flowers or koi fish. To light them, use LED tea lights. On homemade lanterns, you will need to create a base for the tea light by taping or gluing two strips of paper into an "X" across the bottom of the lantern. The light can then be placed inside from the top.

Your Chinese New Year decorations will not be complete without some traditional Chinese decorative knots. These may be created using any type of thick ornamental string, and satin is traditional, but a shiny bamboo yarn in red or gold would be ideal, since bamboo is a traditional part of Chinese floral decorations for Chinese New Year. Particularly appropriate for the occasion is the good luck knot, as shown here. If you are making your own, gold embellishments can be hung from the end of the knots, as well. There are also knots available to buy.

Some flowers that should be included in your party decorations are sunflowers, narcissus, bamboo, eggplant, and chrysanthemums. These may take the form of fresh cut flower arrangements, planted flowers, or simply artistic renderings. Flower designs lend themselves quite well to paper cut outs.

Any attractive paper cutting is also a welcome addition to a Chinese New Year party. It may be best to buy these, since it is a complicated skill to learn. Other popular ornaments include cut outs or images depicting Chinese dragons, koi fish, New Year pictures, and any Chinese calligraphy or other images representing luck, wealth, longevity, health, and happiness. A red diamond painted with the symbol for "auspiciousness" is often hung upside down to symbolize good luck arriving, since the word for "upside down" sounds similar to the word for "arrive".